Why CNN's Ben Wedeman Should be Fired

When a journalist loses his sense of fairness, his ability to understand, if not agree, with both sides of a conflict, he should be dismissed. Ben Wedeman has long since lost his sense of the Middle East. He sees what he wants to see, reports what he wants to report and knows no truth but the one he wishes to write about.

He recently wrote an article “Reporter offers Bush a Gaza, West Bank misery tour” in which he tried to show “what I see, and he [George Bush] won't.” He can do this, he claims, because “I spend a lot of my time covering the West Bank and Gaza.”

He notes that Bush “won't be going to Gaza, the Palestinian territory that is under the rule of Hamas. Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States.” A good reporter might remind his readers that Hamas was the democratically elected leadership of the Palestinians; that they chose this terrorist organization to lead them. Wedeman might have mentioned the dozens, if not hundreds, of rockets and mortars that Hamas has claimed responsibility for firing into Israeli cities. But Wedeman doesn’t do that because that might prejudice his reader…in the wrong direction, as far as Wedeman is concerned. He even attempts to decieve his reader by writing “since Hamas took power.” No, Hamas didn’t “take” power – it was given power by its loyal constituency, who elected them into power and now pays the consequences for their choice.

“President Bush won't see the hospital wards where babies, just weeks old, are dying because their doctors can't get permission from Israeli authorities to go to Israel for treatment as they did in the past,” Wedeman writes. This is so sad that the human heart cannot help but feel pity and anger. This is Wedeman’s goal; never mind questioning why Palestinians can’t provide for their own population.

Does America see to the needs of all Mexicans? Do the French offer free healthcare to Germans? Israeli hospitals are already full, even more than full, with our own population, and if that wasn’t enough, we treat thousands of Palestinians, Arab-Israelis and others. Wedeman’s words are nonsense, but CNN backs him up and so the sob story continues, “Earlier this week, I visited the intensive care unit in Gaza's Nasser Pediatric Hospital.

Hospital director, Dr. Anwar Khalil, explained that a third of their incubators have broken down because of a lack of spare parts. The electricity goes out on a regular basis because the power is cut up to eight hours a day after Israel reduced fuel supplies.” One would wonder why Israel is still responsible for supplying Gaza with fuel and electricity more than 2 years after we pulled out completely. One could wonder where the international community was. One could even stop and wonder why Israel might be reducing fuel supplies.

Here is where Wedeman attempts to be the most sinister of reporters by paying lip service to what is actually true. “Israeli leaders insist they're trying to pressure Hamas militants from firing locally made missiles into Israel, a near daily occurance. But to the vast majority of Gazans -- who have nothing to do with the missiles, who are powerless to stop the militants -- it amounts to collective punishment.”

Is this true? Do the Palestinians really have nothing to do with the missiles? Didn’t they elect Hamas? Didn’t they surround terrorist homes with their wives and their children so that Israeli planes couldn’t attack the terrorists? With their bodies, they protected the Palestinians who are responsible for those very missiles and yet when Israel seeks to address this issue, not by firing into a crowd of “the vast majority of Gazans who have nothing to do with the missiles,” Wedeman accuses Israel of playing foul. Perhaps Wedeman would like to move his family to Sderot and live in the Russian roulette of daily life there?

“In Gaza, they blame Israel. They blame the United States, which supports Israel's policy toward Hamas. They also blame their own leaders,” Wedeman writes. Well, that at least is true. The Palestinians have a long history of blaming anyone and everyone.

"We are cursed," said Iyad Sarraj, a Gaza psychiatrist and a human rights activist. "Our leaders are either Israeli collaborators, asses, or mentally unstable."

Sarraj warns that what he describes as the siege of Gaza will blow up in the face of Israel in another intifada, or uprising. "From the first intifada, which was only stone throwing, to the second intifada, which brought suicide bombing, the third intifada will be much, much worse, and I suspect that it will be chemical weapons and chemical warfare."

Lest you think that Israel might be right in trying to protect its citizens from such promises of violence and death, and even the introduction of chemical weapons, Wedeman takes the lead in shaping what Palestinian propaganda should be saying. Threatening chemical warfare, Wedeman realizes, even if the Palestinians do not, won’t go over well in the West, so Wedeman counters by writing:

“But none of my sources who are intimately familiar with the weaponry available to militant groups has mentioned that as a possibility. There are indications that the militants in Gaza, left to their own devices, are up to no good. I was told by reliable sources that Hamas is busy developing new and more effective weapons -- rockets with propellant resistant to humidity, higher explosive payloads and longer ranges as well as roadside bombs and other explosive devices. Weapons are being stockpiled, and tunnels are being dug all over Gaza in anticipation of an Israeli invasion. Little in life in Gaza is inevitable, but death and destruction.”

Really? Is that why tunnels are being dug? In anticipation of an Israeli invasion? More likely, Mr. Wedeman, they continue to be dug, as they have been for more than a decade, in order to smuggle weapons and drugs into Gaza. No mention of the tunnels used to attack Israeli soldiers, infiltrate into Israel and attack our citizens. And, if they were expecting an Israeli invasion, wouldn’t bomb shelters be smarter than tunnels? Something is very strange and twisted in Wedeman’s argument, but let’s continue.

“President Bush went to Muqata'a, the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah in the West Bank.  But he didn't travel around the West Bank to see checkpoints like the one in Hawara, south of Nablus, where Palestinians wait, often for hours, in the winter cold, waiting to be allowed by young Israeli soldiers to go to their homes, universities, businesses, doctor's appointment, or to visit a relative or a friend.”

Thus, Wedeman bemoans the treatment of Palestinians at the checkpoints. Americans are shivering in their homes feeling bad and wondering about those checkpoints. Most don’t know that we are in the middle of a relatively dry winter, as we often are. Temperatures average in the 60s most days and you can count on both hands the number of rainy days we have had in the last 8 months combined. While the complaint about “hours” is somewhat exaggerated, the “winter cold” comment borders on absurd. There hasn’t been a single day this year that the temperature has even come close to flirting with freezing.

As for the hours that these people wait to go to their homes, universities, businesses, etc. one has to remember, again, the almost daily attempts to smuggle weapons, even inside Palestinian ambulances. This is, yet again, a situation where the Palestinians have made their reality and then complain about it. When you seek to attack using guerrilla warfare and your target is innocent, unarmed civilians, methods must be enforced to protect and separate you from those you seek to harm. That you allow the terrorist element to hide amongst the population makes it impossible to determine, without a complete and thorough search, who the terrorist is. If we make a line for terrorists and a separate pass-through for Palestinians who mean no harm and wish merely to go about their business, do you assume, Mr. Wedeman, that the Palestinian terrorists would honor this? The notion is absurd, even Wedeman’s failure to note the ever-present and constant threat of impending attacks is tantamount to a lie.

Israelis too suffer from endless delays on the road. We too pass through checkpoints on a daily basis. The difference is that the soldiers are trained to quickly differentiate between those who clearly mean no threat and those who might pose a threat. No Israeli woman has ever blown up an Israeli bus – and so Israeli women pass through quickly. No Israeli grandfather has positioned himself between two families in a café and blown himself (and them) to smithereens, and so, Israeli grandfathers pass through the checkpoints. But Palestinian women have blown themselves up; Palestinian grandfathers have murdered and helped their sons and grandsons to murder and so yes, they will wait and be checked.

“If Bush got through Hawara to Nablus, he'd find a city where the Palestinian Authority, which the United States and Israel are supposed to be supporting, is rapidly losing credibility every time Israeli forces close down the city to round up militants, as they did over the weekend. Israel may have valid security reasons for going in, but these operations do irreparable damage to the standing of Palestinian leaders.” Wedeman continues, not even realizing that he has, in essence proved himself a fool.

“Maybe when the U.S. president went to Bethlehem Thursday, he may have seen what Israel calls its security barrier -- a 24-foot-high concrete wall encircling most of the town. Israel put it up to stop suicide bombings, a measure that appears to be working when it comes to cutting down on the number of attacks.”

Here is an interesting part of the article. So, the security barrier is working, so admits Wedeman. “But the Palestinians call it the ’racist apartheid wall.’ The wall has all but destroyed the local economy, cutting Bethlehem off from much of its farmland and reducing the flood of tourists to a trickle.” So, let us understand. The security barrier is saving the lives of hundreds of Israelis, perhaps even thousands when you take into account the injured, the orphaned, and other lives horribly effected by the endless and brutal suicide attacks. At the same time, this life-saving barrier is damaging the Palestinian economy.

Ok, I can live with that. In fact, that’s what I do – I live, because the barrier protects me from the Palestinian bomber. Yes, the Palestinian bomber and his people (many of whom protect and shield him from capture and arrest) have less money. So, perhaps, one would suggest to a rational and logical mind, if the Palestinian leadership stops inciting violence and promoting the idea of suicidal glory from the time children start elementary school up through all the stages of their often self-shortened lives, the barrier would become less necessary and could, as the Israelis have said all along, be replaced or removed.

Arnold Roth, whose beloved daughter Malki was murdered by a Palestinian suicide bomber who hid his explosives in a guitar case as he passed through a checkpoint with his “girl friend” summed up the barrier and the issue of the Palestinian’s damaged economy and quality of life perfectly. Don’t you dare talk to me about the Palestinian quality of life, he told reporters, when my daughter was denied life itself.

When a journalist loses his sense of fairness, his ability to understand, if not agree, with both sides of a conflict, he should be dismissed. We look forward to the day when CNN will realize that Ben Wedeman’s twisted sense of what is happening in the Middle East hurts CNN’s credibility and serves no purpose in helping educate the world about the real conflict in the Middle East.